


Here at the Edge of Night (This Place we Call Home)

by CanisMajor1234



Series: Of Wolves and Sheep [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Fallout 3 giving me feels, M/M, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6078639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanisMajor1234/pseuds/CanisMajor1234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You're not my slave, you're my companion. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise deserves to be shot in the dick. So say no. Tell me when you’re uncomfortable. Speak you’re mind when you have an opinion. Just, God above, don’t let me become Ahzrukhal.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here at the Edge of Night (This Place we Call Home)

Short kid. Yellowed-paper skin and eyes like twin pools of ink. He’s wearing a suit Charon hasn’t seen since… in a long time. Black and form-fitting, with wires and tubes and orange tags that seem to part of the very fabric. _Hei-Gui_. The helmet is fit snuggly under his arm. The sniper rifle case thrown across his back is weathered and well-used.

He glances at Charon once when he enters the Ninth Circle. Doesn’t look surprised, doesn’t look horrified, just looks… sad. Then those dark eyes are forward again, on Ahzrukhal. He moves smoothly, quietly, feet making little noise on the old tile. Charon gets the feeling that he’s making noise on purpose.

His chat with Ahzrukhal is brief. Money changes hands, going in the safe and being exchanged by a simple piece of paper. Charon feels the shift. He doesn’t know if he likes it. The kid smiles as he walks up to six feet eight inches of muscle and wrinkles skin. Kid’s at least a foot and a half shorter, but he doesn’t even seem fazed by the difference. Charon doesn’t even start his usual broken-record phrase.

“You’re my new employer then?” he asks instead. The kid nods, holding out one elegant hand.

“Remus. Remus Averys.” He’s got a firm grip.

Charon finishes his business with two shotgun shells. There would have been a third, but Remus can’t get the safe to open without tampering with the terminal, so Charon doesn’t waste the ammo. They linger in Underworld just long enough to drop off a frankly ridiculous amount of scrap metal with Winthrop. The bag was so heavy and full, Charon wondered how the kid was even able to lift it. He gets ten stimpacks for his trouble, and promises that another caravan will be in with an additional fifty scrap metal by the end of the week.

Winthrop is more than pleased. Charon wonders who this kid is, not only to be willing to carry all that scrap for a city of ghouls, but to also get a caravan to tread its way through supermutant territory for seemingly no reward on his part. That must have cost more caps than it took to purchase Charon’s contract.

They step out into the sun of the Capital Wasteland, and Charon squints against the light. He can’t remember the last time he was out here. Not really. It seems like so long ago.

“Anywhere you want to be going?” Remus asks, stretching his arms over his head, the pop of his back and shoulder audible in the still air. Charon… can’t think of anywhere he needs to be. He remains silent. The kid correctly takes that as a no. “Alright then. Just tell me if anything changes, m’kay?”

Charon doesn’t quite know what to think of Remus. The kid is… strange. Thorough. Eccentric. He doesn’t bother with his sniper unless they have the distance and the incentive; half the time, his .44 magnum or his silenced 10mm pistol do the job well enough. Quick, accurate shots to the head from Charon’s shadow. He doesn’t miss. With that orange visor down, the kills don’t even seem to bother him.

Too close to a fire in a small room just off the main tunnel, though, helmet set aside, the kid is all too human. Remus babbles while he cooks- for two, even though Charon doesn’t necessarily have to eat and they probably won’t have supplies to last if he keeps it up unless they scavenge. He doesn’t seem to care, and the mirelurk cakes do smell pretty good.

“I don’t want you obeying any of my orders unless you want to,” Remus says insistently between bites of still-too-hot food. “You’re not my slave, you’re my companion. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise deserves a shotgun shell to the dick.” He waves his spork as if to emphasize his point. Charon would find it amusing, if he had the capacity to feel such gentle emotions anymore. “So say no. Tell me when you’re uncomfortable. Speak you’re mind when you have an opinion. Just, God above, don’t let me become Ahzrukhal.” The ghoul just nods and keeps the kids words in mind. Remus is giving him something that he hasn’t had in… in a long time, after all.

The freedom of choice. It’s such a strange thing. Remus does his honest best to frame every potential order as a question- _would you kindly?_ And _could you please?_ But even when a command slips through, Charon never once feels compelled to obey. He doesn’t _have_ to do anything. There are times he wants to disobey, if only because he _can_. He doesn’t, though, because that might put the both of them in danger, and Charon won’t risk that. Even when Remus sticks the last stimpack in his leg when they make camp after tumbling with a deathclaw. Even when Remus shouts at him to keep fighting while the kid beats a feral ghoul off himself with the butt of his rifle.

Passing through Evergreen Mills, Charon is able to really see Remus go to work with his sniper rifle. Normally, Charon is in front, drawing attention and danger while Remus takes shots from whatever perch he’s found for himself. This time, though, Remus sets up his rifle on a ridge overlooking the valley. Six extra magazines are stacked easily within reach as Remus sprawls out, one hip kicked out for balance. It’s clear that Remus has at least some training: his stance is near perfect, from the angle of his head to the snug fit of the butt of his rifle to the meat beneath his collarbone.

“Mind spotting for me?” Remus asks as he fiddles with the scope of his rifle. He nudges the binoculars over towards Charon with his elbow. “We’re working back to front.”

It’s abundantly clear when the two stand next to each other that Remus resembles his mother more so than his father. James Averys is a tall man, pale skinned, with muddy brown hair and pale eyes. His son has his attitude, though; they spit and hiss at each other, all civility lost in family quarrel. Charon stands stoically in the shadows and watches, trying not to be amused when, even after all the harsh words and curses, James pulls his son into a one-armed hug and ruffles the kid’s hair.

James doesn’t ask who Charon is, and Charon doesn’t offer. The man just seems glad that there’s at least someone looking out for his son, even if it is a taciturn six-foot-eight ghoul. In tandem with the scientists from Rivet City, they get the purifier up to the condition it was just before it was abandoned.

And then tragedy hits.

Remus bursts into the room just as the blast doors seal shut behind the Enclave troops and his father. He throws himself against the glass, desperate, _terrified_ , until Charon has to pull him away before he hurts himself. The first scientist’s brains splatter across the glass. James meets his son’s eyes with a calm kind of understanding, and certainty.

The room is flooded with radiation. Charon tries to hold Remus, but the kid is slippery, squirming free of the ghouls grip and pressing himself against the glass as though he could reach right through and pull his father out. James is coughing, skin practically burning from the radiation, but his presses a hand firmly against the glass. “ _Run_ ,” he forces out, and Charon has to drag Remus away.

It’s a long, dangerous trek to the Citadel. For once, Remus is the one to stay behind, guarding the scientists as Charon scouts ahead. The best thing about tunnels is that there are too many corridors and paths for any small army like the Enclave to easily cover; Charon finds more than enough ways around the searching troops in power armor to get the scientists to safety.

“Let’s go home,” Remus whispers mournfully as they exit the A-Ring. Charon doesn’t argue.

Remus’s house in Megaton is a two-story affair. Most of the bottom floor is dominated by lockers and labs and a few shelves of electronics that make up the terminal. Separated by a flimsy wall is the kitchen. Beneath the stairs is the bloodstained couch on which Remus stitches up himself or, a few times, Charon. Upstairs, there are three rooms: one for Wadsworth, one for Remus, and one for Charon.

The largest room is Charon’s. He’s not certain if it’s because he takes up the most space physically or because it’s not actually a bedroom- though, the latter is debatable, because Charon has found that if he doesn’t claim the couch early enough in the night Remus will. Regardless, Charon found himself with more space than he knew how to fill. For the first few months, that space remained empty, the shelves barren, the tables uncluttered save the few books Remus doesn’t seem to know how to put up.

Slowly but surely, though, small trinkets found their way onto those shelves. Some are Charon’s, and some are Remus’s. A few books Remus let Charon borrow but never asked to get back that Charon actually enjoyed. A Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle from out west, complete with the cap with the blue star. A deathclaw’s finger bones. A stack of holotapes from Project Purity. Charon finds his eyes catching on them on the nights he either can’t or doesn’t need to sleep. Each item is fogged in memories, ones that Charon feels like he will actually remember. He wants to remember. He wants to remember Remus and the times he shared with the kid, because they mean so much to him now. _Remus_ means so much to him now.

Through the thin metal wall, Charon hears Remus sob his father’s name.

Vault 87 is a shitstorm wrapped in shittier wrapping paper. First it is the ghouls, then the supermutants, then the crazies in the isolation chambers. Fawkes is okay. Getting the G.E.C.K is good.

The concussive grenade that rolls into the room is not so good. Charon instinctively wraps himself around Remus, putting his greater bulk between the grenade and the kid. Such an action doesn’t work as well for flashbangs as it does for fragmentation grenades, though; the noise and light and force drive them both to the ground. Charon can’t hear past the ringing in his ears. He can do little more than flex his fingers when the Enclave soldiers pull Remus from his arms.

The next thing Charon remembers is Fawkes bustling him to his feet, shoving a combat shotgun into his hands, and telling him that they were going to find Remus. The Enclave were laughably easy to track: the commander got his vetibird, but the footsldiers had to hike their way back to their base. Even a supermutant and an unsteady ghoul could follow their trail across the Capital Wastes to their supposedly secret bunker.

When they got there, it was already burning. Remus uncloaks a few feet from the huge concrete door, staggering and stumbling. He is injured and tired and _alive_ , and Charon feels his breath catch in his chest in a way it hasn’t in a long, long time. He rushes to help Remus the rest of the way, just in time for the great maw of the bunker to harmlessly belch fire behind them.

For three days, Remus sleeps.

Fawkes and Charon take turns carrying the Vault wanderer on their backs as they travel, always leaving one or the other with a gun within reach. On the morning of the second day, they meet up with a Brotherhood escort, and they are well-defended all the way back to Megaton. Even with Remus’s unstable condition and the frequent stops to administer stimpacks, they make it home by the evening of the second day.

It’s then that Charon finally gets a good look at Remus. Out of the Hei-Gui, in only a tattered shirt and boxers, the Vault wanderer is pale, a plethora of bruises and scrapes painting his skin. One half-healed bullet wound passes through the meat of his outer hip (though there really isn’t much there, as lean as Remus is). The other grazed his upper arm. Both are healing well. All that is left is for Charon to wait.

Charon has never hated waiting like he does waiting for Remus to wake. Decades fording through mud and standing silent guard have tempered his patience, but he loses it all in the relatively short time that Remus lays, unconscious and unresponsive. He paces. He fidgets. He cleans his gun and all of Remus’s, then cleans them again. Never once does he let Remus out of his sight, though, never wandering more than a few feet away from where the Vault wanderer lays on that bloodstained couch.

On the afternoon of the third day, Remus stirs with a small groan. Charon is at his side in moments. It feels as though a knot unwinds in Charon’s chest, seeing Remus push himself up onto his elbows and flop back down with a few half-hearted curses. He’s tired and bruised and bloodied, but when his eyes meet Charon’s, he _smiles_.

“Well, hey. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? And sore, well, everything. Enclave prewar interrogation tactics and whatnot.”

They are allowed a half a day’s reprieve. Most of that is filled with Remus’s chatter, Charon either sitting on the floor next to the couch or up fetching food and water and such. Remus naps for a few minutes at a time, hand draped off the side of the couch to rest on Charon’s shoulder. These lapses of mostly one-sided conversation never last long enough to permit proper rest. Remus doesn’t want to sleep, and, even though he knows that the morning with only bring further trials, Charon allows it. After what the Vault wanderer has been through, Charon can understand that sometimes sleep can only do more harm than good.

In the morning, Paladin Hoss is there with two other Brotherhood Knights to escort them to the Citadel. Remus chats companionably with the Paladin, asking how he’s been and about the recruits under his command. Asks how the fight’s been going, both on the Enclave front and the supermutant front. Their gossip fills most of the walk to the Citadel.

Once there, though, it’s all business. Sentinel Lyons insists that Remus suit up in some proper power armor, and, while Charon sees the logic in that, Remus counters that he is perhaps safest out of sight and out of mind. He even promises not to get underfoot- a fairly serious oath for a person who seems to constantly poke his fingers into anything vaguely interesting and often sticky.

Liberty Prime powers up with the push of a button and a hum like a vetibird, no small part because of the designs Remus shared with Doctor Li and Scribe Rothchild. It’s an astounding thing to watch, the destruction the great machine wrecks on the Enclave. Charon takes a sick kind of joy in cleaning up the troops that Liberty Prime missed.

Remus doesn’t even bother talking with Colonel Autumn; a knife to the back of the neck ends the Enclave officer’s life before he even realizes the Vault wanderer is there. The Enclave troops scramble to react, but are taken down quickly enough but a combat shotgun and a Gatling laser. Remus hesitates at the base of the steps. The intercom crackles on. Paladin Lyons hurries up the steps, Remus on her heels, Charon behind them both. Doctor Li is panicked, but her message is clear enough: is the pressure in the chamber isn’t relieved soon, the whole place will blow.

Charon doesn’t even get the chance to react. Remus unclasps the necklace from around his neck and tosses it to Lyons- his holotags, and the sealed vial he designed to hold Charon’s contract. The outer blast door slams closed. Sentinel Lyons is shouting, cursing in a way that’s hardly appropriate for a soldier of her status. Remus just tosses her a smile over his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut, tears burning twin tracks on his cheeks from the radiation.

“ _Revelations 21:6_ ,” Charon hears, clear even through the thick glass. “ _I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely._ ”

“Damnit, Remus! This isn’t the time for a fucking sermon!”

“ _He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God and he shall be my son_.”

“There’s still time. Remus, please!”

“ _But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death._ ”

Charon presses a hand against the glass, and Remus, slumped and sick from the radiation, presses back. Through all, he’s _smiling_ , choking on the radiation and his own sobs. “Keep living, Charon,” he insists. “Please. I’m… I’m okay. I’ll see Dad soon. I’ll… I’ll be okay. And you will be too.” Remus slides down the glass and Charon follows. If he could still cry, he would have. Instead, he just feels a thick sort of sadness clog his throat. “Charon,” Remus whispers, like it’s the only thing keeping him alive. “I want you to know, I love you. You’ll be okay. You’re strong and I love you and you’ll be okay.”

There’s a pulse, blue light and harsh force, and Charon blacks out.

Two weeks later, Charon opens his eyes to a cracked ceiling and two sets of pulses beeping through the room, one quick and light, the other slow and easy. Charon breathes deep until the quick one calms to match the other, slow, easy, and in synch. He feels sore, stiff, every muscle stretched out. Behind his eyes, there is still a bright flare of blue.

“It’s good to see you awake,” Sentinel Lyons says from his side. Charon doesn’t turn his head, instead keeping his eyes on the ceiling as he forces his dry mouth and parched throat to form words. Or, a word.

“Remus?”

“Still asleep. He’s… well, I’ll let you see for yourself. Doc says he’ll live, though. Physically. Mentally and emotionally…” Sarah pauses, words apparently not working for her either. “He was ready to die in there,” she finally says, and Charon draws a shuddering breath at the memory. “We don’t know if he’ll be okay if he wakes up. _When_ he wakes up.”

Charon forces himself up on his elbows, then into a sitting position with Sarah’s help. Remus is lying in a bed across the room, wearing a ratty t-shirt and a blanket. He’s pale, hair oily and unwashed, chest rising and falling with the beat of the monitor. His skin is an odd patchwork of damaged and healed skin, rough and red where it had been ravaged by the radiation. Two white tracks ran down his cheeks where the irradiated tears had stained his skin. The holotags and Charon's contract hang in their familiar place around his neck. Sarah helps Charon into a seat beside the bed, giving him a firm pat on the shoulder before she leaves.

Remus’s hand is delicate and cold against Charon’s weathered skin when Charon takes it. _When he wakes up_. He’ll wake up. He has to, because Charon has a lot to say to him.

And Charon has a whole week to form what he’s going to say. Words have never really been his thing, but for Remus, he will _try_ . And though he turns each word over in his mind a dozen or so times, he finds that there isn’t much to be said. He has feelings for Remus, ones that would put them both in danger if anyone who wants Remus’s head on a platter were ever to find out. They’re the kind of feelings Charon normally wouldn’t do anything with. But he’s already almost lost Remus. _Twice_. The time for inaction, he realizes, is long past.

Remus waking is an event in itself. Elder Lyons had set back formal celebrations until the Vault wanderer had woken. In a wheelchair in front of almost the entire Brotherhood of Steel, Remus is presented with his stealth suit, repaired seamlessly with pieces from a similar suit that the Brotherhood had salvaged years ago. It would work better than it had before, Scribe Rothchild promised. And in front of almost the entire Brotherhood of Steel, where no one would question his decision (not that anyone would at this point), Elder Lyons makes Remus both a Knight of the Brotherhood of Steel and an honorary member of the Lyons’ Pride.

Beyond that, it is recovery. While the last of Remus’s injuries begin to fade, the Capital Wastes get their first taste of pure water. While Remus learns to walk again on shaking legs, the last of the Enclave is stamped out. In a week’s time, Remus walks out of Citadel on his own two feet, Charon at his shoulder.

“Let’s go home,” he says, and Charon smiles.

It’s much easier to show a person how you feel, Charon realizes, then to tell them. Affection through little gestures- it’s a big house, but Charon and Remus spend most of the time in each other’s space. Shoulders brush through thin fabric. Elbows bump across tables and over tools. Hands linger a little longer each time. Tension mounts between them, slowly, until Charon can feel the anticipation dancing over his skin.

They’ve argued over the couch in Charon’s room plenty of times. Remus insists that it’s more comfortable than his bed- they both do, actually, which seems to be the basis for their arguments. Charon insists that Remus needs the space to stretch out to heal, something even a little guy like Remus can’t do on the couch. They even tussle over it, now and then, playfully, little pushes and shoves and slaps.

Remus sprawls out atop Charon’s chest, sides still shaking with laughter as he gasps for breath. His skin is healed now, for the most part, only small discolored patches and streaking scars remaining. Charon runs a thumb over the light pink scar on Remus’s upper arm. A month of rest has done well to heal his wounds; Charon honestly wonders at the fact that Remus has yet to go stir-crazy from inactivity. They’ll be heading out soon, no doubt.

Even though Remus is light enough to not even affect the ghoul’s breathing, Charon notices immediately when he stills. A glance down, and Charon realizes just how close they are. If he were to just lean down a bit…

Remus surges up to meet him, eagerly, like a thirsty man offered an endless source of water. Charon honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kissed. He had lost most of his feeling in his lips during the ghoulification, but Remus kissed firmly, insistently, with nips and teeth and force.

Charon found himself kissing back with the same desperation. His hands curled with the curve of Remus’s hips even as the Vaunt wanderer’s hands clenched in the front of his shirt. Remus was warm and soft, smooth under Charon’s rough and wrinkled hands. He mewled into the kiss, small and desperate and _young_ , so young. But, then again, most smoothskins are young in Charon’s eyes. When Charon slips a muscled thigh between his legs he keens, hips stuttering forward and back arching and breaking their kiss. Charon makes up for it by running what’s left of his lips over the elegant column of Remus’s lips.

They can’t go very far, not in the position they’re in. They manage their pants halfway down their hips, rolling against each other in waves. Remus twists and squirms, moaning against Charon’s mouth. He’s sensitive, inexperienced, but Charon is as well. Their shared touches are tentative, uncertain, learning. Charon’s hands dance over Remus’s soft skin, tracing scars and patches of hair. In return, Remus maps the expanse of Charon’s gnarled and wrinkled skin with little hesitation. He’s curious, not disgusted, not afraid to press a little harder, to use the blunt of his nails and the sharp of his teeth.

The Rad-X Charon all but forces down Remus’s throat is more for the radiation in his own bodily fluids, but the shower water still has a few rads in them. Charon can feel them tingle on his skin as he gently sponges cum and sweat off Remus’s skin. The Vault dweller sleepily leans into Charon, all boneless and completely unhelpful. Charon doesn’t mind; he dries Remus off with what passes for a towel in the Capital Wastes before carrying him upstairs to bed. Remus pouts when Charon tries to pull the cover up over him and leave him there, tugging the ghoul down into the tiny bed. It takes a bit of effort to get them situated: Charon would be too big for the bed on his own, and Remus is all bones and sharp edges that sometimes shove their way into Charon’s soft spots.

Eventually, they settle with Remus resting half on Charon’s chest, their legs tangled together. Remus sleeps in lapses for the first few hours, still and silent for a few moments before he jerks awake again. Charon presses his face into Remus’s hair, rubbing small circles into the Vault wanderer’s back until his breathing levels out and he finally, _finally_ falls asleep.

Charon closes his eyes, and he’s home.


End file.
